Jul 29, 2013

Exporting on JBoss Hybrid Mobile Tools

Work that I have been doing on tools around Apache Cordova is continuing its progress. I have been aware that we were not doing such a great job with exporting stuff out of our new project type, Native Hybrid projects. So I have been working to build a couple of new export wizards to fix this problem. Overall the development of the wizards have taken a longer time then usual because I decided to introduce extension points to accommodate easier integration of platforms in addition to currently supported iOS and Android. More on the extension points later as it deserves a post of its own.

The first of the wizards allows developers to export Native Platform Projects. Basically it generates a native project with all the bits from Apache Cordova for that platform that you can open/build/run via the platform's tools. For example, on iOS the exported project is an XCode project that can be build/run using XCode. Here is a screencast that shows export Native Platform Project wizard in action.

The second wizard is Mobile Application Export wizard. It helps you to export a native platform binary that is build for release. Depending on the platform, you can run this binary on a real device directly or after signing. At this time, we do not sign the binaries, but I do wish to support it in the future. I think this will be a critical feature if/when we support remote compilers.

We are moving as (reasonably) fast as possible to add new features to the project so project is actually on that exciting stage to contribute. If you are interested, it is hosted on github and your pull requests are always welcome. If you feel the need to contact me, you can use the JBoss tools mailing list or the #aerogear or #jbosstools irc channels on freenode.